Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

I'm still quite interested in the idea and I'm willing to put in a share of money as need be. I'm not super sure how much I'd actually play, though. Personally I'd rather do SMP than Creative mode, it feels like much more of an accomplishment to build something small in survival mode than something massive in creative. I've never used any mods because I'm too much of a purest, but I have seen a few amazing ones.

Mostly I'm curious, since I haven't ever tried multiplayer and it would be great to do so with you all.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Counting Aine, that accounts for everyone who's posted more than once in this thread. That's five of us. If there's no one else, we'll probably be amply served by enough RAM to handle seven or eight simultaneous sessions. But the more the merrier! Anyone else?

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

I have been doing a fair bit of research for this, not enough I feel, though. There's enough server hosts and the like to make one's head spin. Most of which offer similarly level rates. And some of which have the same rates, but suddenly pounds? Oh, okay, hello European based servers. Anyway, from everything I gather, we shouldn't need to go over most companies' $20/month plans. Even if we do a ton of exploring or have several mods.

Which reminds me... I've also been looking at mods, looking at Bukkit, looking at... well, anything I can. There's SO much out there in regards to things one can do with MC, it's ... ludicrous. There's mods for money, for kits-of-stuff, for oh-you-found-diamonds-here-everyone-gets-something, to add in more monsters, to eliminate creeper craters, to make functional nuclear power plants, to add in leveling of skills...

There are ways to keep the fun of survival mode while yet still making it easier (and maybe even amusing) through selected mods. I know my preference is for a slightly modded survival. Depending on desires, there's ways to even have people on creative, or admins and stuff could spawn items and the like. Pretty much, there's a way to make anything work that people want.

Now to just get us to all work together to build a pixel-Ohtori Academy... complete with dueling arena...

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Aine Silveria wrote:

Now to just get us to all work together to build a pixel-Ohtori Academy... complete with dueling arena...

I was imagining the upside-down castle and drooling a little. And mentally building a Botticelli Utena on a seashell.

I know nothing about the technical end of Minecraft servers, though I've experimented a little with mods in SSP. I doubt our small group needs currency, or mods that drastically change gameplay (unless those mods are awesome), and of course every mod is something we have to worry about with each new patch; on the other hand, I admit it would be nice not to worry about creepers blowing up our monuments, particularly if we're not giving ourselves easy access to items through creative mode or inventory mods. Mixed feelings. I'm inclined to leave the decisions about mods to those of you who know what you're talking about and will be doing the work of installing them.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

How about the mods that are found that seem like ones that could be useful or interesting, they can be synopsied, or links given to things about them, so everyone can decide if that mod causes an effect they don't mind? I think that would be fairest, even if there are some mods that I'd love to see you guys play with that are slightly mechanic-altering.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Alright, here's some of them.

Essentials is a mod that many of the servers I've been on run. ... now that I think on it, I think most servers run it. Anyway. This particular one allows teleports, such as the ability to warp to friends, warp back to the spawn, set a home without the use of a bed (so if you get lost while caving, you can easily find your way home), setting up warps to particularly cool builds. It allows for the creation of user groups, which gives certain people certain abilities, which could be very good for setting people to what they want to do. It has basic protection against firespread and creepers. It does a lot, and most of it unobtrusively. It has some sort of currency thing included, but I ought to be able to shut it off. Only downside I can see is that setting it up may be slightly difficult. I've not worked with the code for any of these mods before, but I can start mucking about in a baby server on my laptop to see what I can learn.

In the case of an amusing one, Found Diamonds is mainly designed as a tool for public servers to cut down on xray or light packs/hacks, but it has an interesting side bit of code I like... you can configure it so that when anyone is mining and finds diamonds, everyone currently on the server has a chance at getting one of three items set by the admin. The most recent server that had it and had this feature on gave coal, iron ingots & slimeballs. I loved it because I have such a crappy time at finding slime chunks on SMP...

World Edit is another mod I see on just about every server. It's generally used as a tool for admins to fix things or quickly make things. It's like a find & replace tool for Minecraft. I see it could be an interesting way to help people make builds, or easily remove stuff people don't want around anymore. I don't know that I'd have everyone have access to this particular one. It is a popular tool to make servers crash or for general griefing in the wrong hands.

World Guard is another mod I see everywhere. It's a more robust package that allows for the stopping of fire spread, lava fires, creepers, ice build up, leaf decay, and more stuff like that. It also allows for regions to be protected. I personally see nothing wrong with a little creative pranking (some of the stuff I see Guude and Etho and the crew get up to makes me laugh like crazy), but some forms of pranks can be somewhat destructive or mean. This also allows for safe regions from monster spawns or monster damage.

My absolute favorite mod right now is mcMMO. This mod allows for skills to level up. Say you spend a lot of time chopping trees. Eventually, you start getting double drops as a reward, and a special skill to help you chop trees quicker and cleaner. Or you spend a lot of time digging out dirt. You'll eventually start getting things from that dirt, like pieces of glowstone dust, or cocoa beans. Are you a klutz that falls off everything? Well, eventually you'll start taking less damage as you learn to roll. It has a repair function that expands on the basic MC repair and allows you to eventually be able to have a chance to keep those precious enchantments. I just personally really love the functionality and the fun in this one.

Another useful mod is the LWC locking mod. It allows you to protect and lock things instead of places. Doors, buttons, levers, furnaces, all kinds of things. I get that we're a good, honest bunch, but *shrugs* I like having the option to lock my doors, even if I don't actually do it, you know?

There are so many other mods out there. While looking up the pages for these ones, I found mods to allow you to pick up monster spawners with silk touch picks. So many economy mods. PvP arenas, mob arenas, spleef arenas. Town mods. Mods to allow for multiple worlds, like a mining world, a creative map, etc. Mods to create magic. It's interesting the things one can do to MC.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Essentials sounds... essential. If for no other reason than because in SMP everyone has to sleep at the same time to set a spawn point using a bed.

Found Diamonds is cute, but it might be a lot of work to install simply for the rewards themselves.

World Edit seems like it would be good to have if we were going to concentrate on building lots of things, but less so in a loose 'do as you like' approach.

World Guard would also be most useful for protecting buildings. And there is an appeal to being able to stop monsters from spawning in certain locations without covering everything in torches. (As much as I enjoy covering things in torches.) I've never had much of a problem with fire spread in single player but I've also been pretty careful with it.

I've seen mcMMO before and it does seem neat. It adds some more things to accomplish if people feel like it... though I can imagine jumping off a cliff constantly just to level up...

LWC I'm not sure on, mostly because I don't know how it works. I'm guessing you can use the commands if you create the object, but not if you haven't? Otherwise someone could lock you out of your own stuff, but how does it keep track? It's one thing to be able to lock your door, but it's another to be forced to put a lock on all your doors just to prevent someone else from shutting you out of your own home. Although I don't expect it would be an issue on a small server with just us either way.

The only mod I know (vaguely) about and am completely against is one which makes wearing armor cause slower movement.

I've never used any mods so I can't really say much or offer suggestions, except that Keep Inventory on Death might be popular with a few people here.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

I tend to agree with Ragnarok that Essentials and World Guard seem like very good ideas. LWC I can take or leave; as long as it's just the bunch of us I don't really care, if the mod doesn't interfere with normal activity. World Edit, likewise, is fine with me but it's not something I'd expect to use. But based on these synopses, I like mcMMO and love Found Diamonds. The latter especially seems like it might give us a sense of shared achievement and collaboration in SMP -- make it feel different from half a dozen people all playing SSP and happening to share a world.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

LWC is one I can take or leave, because I know you guys and am fairly that I can trust you with mah pixel-stuff. Yes, a public lockable item can be locked by someone else. Bio and I can attest to that being true. I know if this were to be a more public server, I'd certainly want it, but if most people feel it to be unnecessary with this group then I have no problem with it not being there at all.

I'll look into something about a kept inventory or a death chest. There's several mods like that out there, but hadn't thought of it myself.

A couple other things Bio and I discussed today and thought to bring to the whole group for debate and discussion...

PvP? Yea, nay, don't care, have an arena/other area for it, toggleable on a person by person basis... other options are presumably possible here too.

People are overwhelmingly in favor of survival. That's cool, I prefer survival servers myself as well. What level? Easy, normal or hard?

Also, with 1.2.5 coming out soon, a lot of these mods, and Bukkit itself, will have to update. Most are pretty quick about it since many of them are so widely used. But just something else to keep in mind.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

I don't have any desire to PVP myself. If other people want it that's perfectly ok, though.

I've only played Minecraft on normal difficulty, aside from short bouts of Creative mode. I don't know how much easier Easy would be nor how much harder Hard is. I do know that falling off a cliff into lava is probably going to kill you in any case, which is normally the sort of thing which gets me.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Found Keep Items as a Bukkit mod. Seems to have the functionality you're looking for (inventory stays in your inventory on death). Let me know what you guys think of that one, and if you want the keep exp. addition.

Main difference between all the levels is monster damage and hunger effects. On easy, if you starve, you'll only go to 5 hearts. Normal takes you to 1/2 a heart. On hard, starving will kill you. Normal damage of a zombie is 2 1/2 hearts. On easy, it's reduced to 1 1/2, hard bumps it to 3 1/2.

I don't much like the idea of hard myself, mainly because I have a tendency to ride the hunger line and starve a lot and don't want to die from it. Also, zombies beating down my doors is something I don't want, though zombies beat on doors in all levels it seems.

This setting is also easily changed, so it would be no trouble at all to set it to any of them and change it later if that level ends up being too difficult or easy.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Keeping experience is actually more appealing to me than keeping items. A lot of my deaths have occured close to home, when I misjudge how much damage a fall is going to do. In that case it's been easy to recover my items, but the experience which drops is always less than I originally had. Or sometimes I get very lost, but I can generally check my coordinates and make a chest to store my items, then kill myself to find my home again, back track and get my stuff. I haven't done a lot of enchanting because I'm bad about actually keeping experience levels.

If difficulty is easy enough to change, I'd suggest setting it to normal at first. If it proves too daunting then we could switch it to easy. I forgot about zombies smashing down doors now, though I doubt anyone's really raring for hard difficulty in the first place.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

All of my deaths so far have come either in lava or on the Nether or both, which makes retrieving my items inconvenient or impossible, so items are more important to me. Experience isn't important to me unless there's also a mod that improves the enchantment system.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

I typically die from lava and the Nether, so Easy or Normal is fine. As far as hunger goes we can all help eachother out, so I don't think we will have to worry about that on normal. Also like keeping inventory upon death. I'm so juberish about ever actually using any of my diamond crafted armor, tools or weapons for fear of losing them.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Aine Silveria wrote:

Improves the enchantment system how? Because while I'm looking for mods, I can look for some more.

Oh, it's not a huge deal to me; I don't often feel like I need to enchant stuff. If I were designing the enchantment system, I would let the player see what they're going to get. I'm not picky. I just want to know that I'm not spending 40 experience levels to get Bane of Arthropods IV on my sword.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

satyreyes wrote:

Aine Silveria wrote:

Improves the enchantment system how? Because while I'm looking for mods, I can look for some more.

Oh, it's not a huge deal to me; I don't often feel like I need to enchant stuff. If I were designing the enchantment system, I would let the player see what they're going to get. I'm not picky. I just want to know that I'm not spending 40 experience levels to get Bane of Arthropods IV on my sword.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Enchanting is something of a crapshoot.

Easy Enchant looks like it sticks fairly close to the vanilla way to doing things, but with being able to specify which enchantment you actually get. On the other hand, the interface looks a bit cluttered and "All ideas are on extreme hold, due to University" doesn't bode well for updates.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

I hate to interrupt the exciting multiplayer discussion with a question about game mechanics, but: when I watch tutorial videos I sometimes see players plop blocks down in places where I didn't think you could put a block, places where there are no adjacent solid blocks. What's the trick to doing this? For example, if I am in a flat desert and I plop down a torch on the ground, how can I now place a block on top of the torch without adding more blocks first? Is there some key I hold down?

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

You can't place anything directly onto a torch, to my knowledge. Likewise I don't know how a block could be placed in midair. A fencepost would work, though.

The rules may be different with half-blocks though, such as stone slabs.

[edit] - I decided to check, and you can place a stone slab on top of a torch with no other adjacent block. I'm guessing any half-block would work similarly; is that the sort of block you saw placed this way?

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Yes, it is something you can do. Just tested it with a torch and some dirt. I don't know about the midair blocks, but putting solid blocks on torches or redstone torches is just a matter of making sure you are aiming on the top of the torch's hitbox before placing your block. It's especially done with redstone torches to allow for vertical wiring.

Re: MOTHER EFFING YAH MINECRAFT THREAD

Ahh, so I just wasn't aiming for the torch properly. That makes sense. I'm not certain whether this covers all the situations I've seen; I could have sworn I've seen people place a block diagonally above another block when there were no other blocks nearby. If I run into a video where I see it happen, I'll post it! Thank you, Ragnarok and Aine!

I found an enchantment mod called Better Enchanting that appears to be actively maintained and looks like my dream system: you just pick your own enchants. Since it sounds like I'm not the only one who finds the default enchantment system kind of silly, we might consider installing it. I hope we can get the server up and running soon!